Saturday, March 19, 2011
Guess What I Found...
Friday, March 18, 2011
Rule Number One
YOU ARE A CREATURE UNLIKE ANY OTHER.
If anyone is curious what I meant about following all The Rules in my "Twenty-One" post, here's a little intro for you. I highly recommend that all you ladies out there pick yourself up a copy of Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneiders' book. Boys, put that curiosity back in your pocket. You don't have to know why, you just have to appreciate. And ask the girls out! (We like that.)
"Being a creature unlike any other is a state of mind. You don't have to be rich, beautiful, or exceptionally smart to feel this way about yourself. And you don't have to be born with this feeling either, It can be learned, practiced, and mastered, like all the other rules in this book.
Being a creature unlike any other is really an attitude, a sense of confidence and radiance that permeates your being from head to toe. It's the way you smile (you light up the room), pause in between sentences (you don't babble on and on out of nervousness), listen (attentively), look (demurely, never stare), breathe (slowly), stand (straight), and walk (briskly with your shoulders back).
It doesn't matter if you're not a beauty queen, that you never finished college, or that you don't keep up with current events. You still think you're enough! You have more confidence than women with MBAs or money in the bank, You don't grovel. You're not desperate or anxious. You don't date men who don't want you. You trust in the abundance and goodness of the universe: if not him, someone better, you say. You don't settle. You don't chase anyone. You don't use sex to make men love you. You believe in love and marriage. You're not cynical. You don't go to pieces when a relationship doesn't work out. In stead, you get a manicure and you go out on another date or to a singles dance. You're an optimist. You brush away a tear so that it doesn't smudge your makeup and you move on! Of course, that is not be how you really feel. This is how you pretend you feel until it feels real."
If anyone is curious what I meant about following all The Rules in my "Twenty-One" post, here's a little intro for you. I highly recommend that all you ladies out there pick yourself up a copy of Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneiders' book. Boys, put that curiosity back in your pocket. You don't have to know why, you just have to appreciate. And ask the girls out! (We like that.)
"Being a creature unlike any other is a state of mind. You don't have to be rich, beautiful, or exceptionally smart to feel this way about yourself. And you don't have to be born with this feeling either, It can be learned, practiced, and mastered, like all the other rules in this book.
Being a creature unlike any other is really an attitude, a sense of confidence and radiance that permeates your being from head to toe. It's the way you smile (you light up the room), pause in between sentences (you don't babble on and on out of nervousness), listen (attentively), look (demurely, never stare), breathe (slowly), stand (straight), and walk (briskly with your shoulders back).
It doesn't matter if you're not a beauty queen, that you never finished college, or that you don't keep up with current events. You still think you're enough! You have more confidence than women with MBAs or money in the bank, You don't grovel. You're not desperate or anxious. You don't date men who don't want you. You trust in the abundance and goodness of the universe: if not him, someone better, you say. You don't settle. You don't chase anyone. You don't use sex to make men love you. You believe in love and marriage. You're not cynical. You don't go to pieces when a relationship doesn't work out. In stead, you get a manicure and you go out on another date or to a singles dance. You're an optimist. You brush away a tear so that it doesn't smudge your makeup and you move on! Of course, that is not be how you really feel. This is how you pretend you feel until it feels real."
How To Be Alone
When I made my list of twenty-one goals for this year I added the "do things alone" line almost just because I wanted to be done already, and it seemed like an easy enough thing to accomplish. I am a very independent person. I like taking care of my own life and don't often, if ever, ask for assistance in doing it. I enjoy being able to call the shots and make the schedule. I do things for myself because I can, and should, and right now the life I'm building is about me. Where I work, go to school, spend my free time, it's all about what's best for me right now. Isn't that nice? :) However, I also very much enjoy my social life and spend a great deal of time with other people. I like to make plans for the weekends and like so many others consider it a let down if I end up just sitting at home on a Friday night. But I have been known to decline invitations to events if I don't have someone to come with me I know I can stick with, even if we go around socializing with other people the whole night anyway. I've decided that this is silly. Why do I need to have someone else with me to go out and have a good time? Thus, my resolution. No more saying no to solo. I've practiced a couple of times already and find that while I've been uncomfortable at first, it's actually a really great feeling. I know I'm capable of doing things on my own, now I just need to embrace it.
I came across this video incidentally that talks about this very thing. It is beautiful, and really moving in a make-you-think kind of way, because a lot of people are afraid of being alone. So here's to being brave and breaking out of the norm. Enjoy.
"If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself. Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament."
Tanya Davis
I came across this video incidentally that talks about this very thing. It is beautiful, and really moving in a make-you-think kind of way, because a lot of people are afraid of being alone. So here's to being brave and breaking out of the norm. Enjoy.
"If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself. Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament."
Tanya Davis
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Love & Olive Oil
In other news! I LOVE TO COOK. On Saturday I hosted "Chinese Night" here and had a great time cooking up some yummy kung pow shrimp with rice noodles, crab and cilantro won tons, pork won tons, and this to die for dark chocolate cake, the recipe for which I found at the delightful Love & Olive Oil blog. I really wish I had taken a picture of the finished cake before the many, many hungry mouths devoured it. I'll be sure to snap one next time. In the original recipe the batter is intended to be made into cupcakes, but I am really just not a cupcake girl. I feel like there is so much more creative liberty when presenting a full cake. For this one I baked the batter in a square nine by nine inch pan, then cut it in half and arranged the two pieces lengthwise on a long rectangular ceramic dish. I then piped on the (amazingly delicious fudge-like) icing with a basketweave tip width-wise so there was a line-textured layer of it over the whole top of the cake. (Also because I left the icing pretty thick and it would have destroyed the cake had I attempted to just spread it on.) Finally, just because I felt like it, I drizzled pretty little criss-crossing lines of caramel sauce over the whole thing so it would feel finished, and to go with the hint of caramel flavor in the icing. I served the cake with vanilla fudge swirl ice cream to balance out the rich density of the chocolate as well, but it can definitely stand on its own. This is one decadent chocolate cake.
Also, just a hint, I already had cocoa powder stocked in the pantry and didn't want to go out and buy the special dark cocoa powder the recipe calls for, so I simply doubled the amounts of cocoa in the recipe, both for the cake and the icing. This is a general substitution you can use when you want to up the intensity of your chocolate in any recipe, but I'll admit I've never used the special dark cocoa, so I really couldn't say if it is a true equivalent in flavor. I can tell you that my version probably makes the batter a little thicker simply because there's a higher volume of dry ingredients to the wet ones, but I'll probably keep making this cake just how I did. It really turned out very well. Here's the recipe exactly as it appears on the Olive Oil blog. Enjoy! I sure did. :)
Black & Gold Dark Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes.
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup special dark cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, room temperature
1/3 cup special dark cocoa powder
2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons milk or soymilk
2 tablespoons caramel topping
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin pan with paper liners.
Whisk together the coconut milk, sugar, oil, and vanilla extract and beat till foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add to wet ingredients and beat until no lumps remain (or very few remain).
Pour into liners, filling each with 1/4 cup of batter. Optionally add a dollop of caramel sauce to each cup. Bake 18-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.
For frosting, cream butter until smooth and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add cocoa powder and beat until incorporated. Add 1 tablespoon soymilk and mix to combine. Add confectioners' sugar 1/2 cup at a time and mix until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes total. Add caramel topping and mix well. If frosting is too thick, add more soymilk and beat until fluffy. If frosting is too soft, add more sugar and again, beat until fluffy. You want the frosting to keep it's shape when piped on to the cupcake, but still fluffy enough that it stays light and soft when eaten. Top with a drizzle of caramel sauce if desired.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Theory of Color
Tonight I've been working on a project for my Color Theory class in which I have to find and classify several images based on their various color concepts, and then present to the class my thoughts on why certain colors were selected and how they influence the overall idea of the piece. I am already in love with this class, but I am especially in love with this assignment. I love that not only am I really starting to recognize these classifications right off the bat, but I am also, out of necessity, discovering some really great work by very talented artists and designers out there on the big bad web. I have an album attached to my Facebook page with many of the pictures I really like and find inspiration in, but I wanted to also share a few of them here just because I'm on a serious visual-design-stimulation kick at the moment and needed a quick little five minute break before I finish this sucker up. Mazel tov!
Ps. Did you know that mazel tov actually means good luck? Doesn't make any sense whatsoever the way I used it. But I don't care. Mazel tov!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Twenty-One Before Twenty-Two
1. Get under two-hundred (Thirty five pounds last year was a good start, but I'm finishing this sucker!)
2. Start a choir in my singles branch
3. Finish reading through the Book of Mormon (I always seem to get hung up in Alma. Why is that?)
4. Write Meagan on her mission (She leaves April 6th. I think I miss her already.)
5. Get into those fourteens! (Aren't great looking incentive jeans just so bittersweet?)
6. Set up the rest of my desk (What with all this art happening in my life I needed an upgrade!)
7. Have a Harry Potter marathon (Totally serious about this. Who's in??)
8. Have at least $800 in savings (Half way to my new computer!)
9. Stick to The Rules (Ladies, you will appreciate this one: "All The Rules" by Ellen Fein & Sherrie Schneider)
10. Do something for the first time
11. Visit Kira and Gabe in Phoenix (These withdrawals started the moment I drove away...)
12. Make some more seasonal aprons (At least a head start on the one-for-every-holiday project!)
13. Learn how to really use Photo Shop. (It's a good thing I'm going to art school, huh?)
14. Spend more quality time with Sara (Sara, the younger. A good sister. :)
15. Stick to the No Complaining policy (Who needs it??)
16. Eat more vegetables (Kira, you are my inspiration)
17. Learn Spanish! (Starting with my class next quarter)
18. Totally Pay off the credit card (Less than two hundred bucks worth of gas shouldn't be too difficult)
19. Walk more outside (Can't wait for it to be warm enough to make good use of that track across the street)
20. Eat breakfast every day
21. Learn to do things alone - Happily (No more staying home because I don't have a buddy!)
What are your goals? I know someone has to have a birthday coming up. And even if you don't, you can get a head start thinking of what you want to put on your list. I didn't realize how much I'd have to think about it but twenty-one ended up being quite the undertaking! I think it will get easier with practice though. And now that I've got it in my brain so I won't start almost two months late next time!
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