Hiatus

For some reason, Summer Break has never been like a vacation for me. My summers are always way busier than the school year. Sure there's not homework and sports and all that, but at least school is a routine and when you're done you get to just sit at home and relax. Summer for me is always fun, but there's not a moment of rest. With visiting family in UT, AZ, OR, NV, them visiting us, camps, trips—I'm just never home. I don't know how people have a summer job or take summer classes, I'm not in one place for long enough, never more than a week at a time. I get home, unpack, do laundry, and pack it all up again for the next trip. I've been pretty proud of myself for keeping this blog going for two whole weeks now, but now that's it's July Summer is really kicking into high gear. So just to let anyone who may happen to read this (aka Annalee) know, I can't promise any posts, at least not any good ones till Septemberish. I'll still try to write now and then, but hopefully in the Fall I'll really get going. Have a splendid Summer everyone!

Pink Toes, Red Dirt

As you may gather from my blog, I have many different hobbies and interests. There are many different sides to my personality, and sometimes they can be inconsistent. In most ways, I am a very traditional, feminine, girly-girl type. But at the same time, I can be pretty adventurous. I like animals, even creepy crawlies (I prefer reptiles to mammals any day), and I even love the great outdoors (when it's not too hot). When I do go on adventures though, it often clashes with my girly-girl clothes—you can often find me climbing a tree or splashing though a river in a pink dress. Yesterday I headed up to Zion's Camp, a campground that my grandparents have been the caretakers of for most of my life, to take some pictures because they'll soon be leaving it. And because it's gorgeous. I put on my sparkly flip flops, filled my purse with water and a walkie-talkie, and clipped on an Off fan (works pretty well by the way), and headed off into the forest. No matter how many times I climb through blackberry bushes in shorts, a t-shirt, and open-toed shoes, I can never seem to remember that it's not such a great idea. It was a fun day out in the peaceful beauty of nature, and I even found a couple of very cooperative butterflies.

Diego

After I made the Dora cake for my niece, my nephew of course wanted a cake for his birthday. His special order was "Diego rescuing a bug that's in trouble." I didn't quite go all out, but this time I focused on the title character. He's a little short and stumpy, but I was pretty happy with how he turned out, especially since he's only my third shot at fondant work. I especially love how the hair turned out. And the kids loved him, that's what matters!

Origami

Next week, I'm going to be a leader at Girls' Camp, and our ward's theme is Japan. So naturally I took it upon myself to make as many complicated origami flowers and birds as possible to decorate the camp. In the process, I learned that once you get to the last few steps, you can just kind of skip and fudge, because the actual folds are really confusing and difficult. You'll miss out on some of the detail, but they'll be fine hanging from a tree at a campsite for a week. Here is a bit of what I ended up with.

WARNING: The pictures are pretty bad, it was late and inside and my camera was out of batteries. Sorry, I should have planned ahead, but you get the idea.

Cakes

About a year ago I got into cake decorating. So much fun! I still have a lot to learn, but it's easier than I expected. Fondant is great, it's just like clay so you can make anything. Of course fondant is more decorative than it is delicious.

I modelled this bulldog after one I dogsat for. It's people share my love of cooking and the Food Network Challenges that inspired me to try cake decorating.

A Dora cake for my niece's 2nd birthday. I learned that it takes a VERY long time to make a detailed cake like this.

And where is the Dora for this Dora cake you ask? Well, I also learned that it's not a great idea to save the main detail of a cake for last, when you've stayed up all night (literally, I think I only slept for an hour) making the rest of it first, and especially when you've never tried anything like it before. I did make her, but she's kind of embarrassing, I'm not sure I could even post it. But my second try wasn't so bad—stay tuned to see the Diego I made for my Nephew's 4th earlier this year...

Books, Glorious Books

Besides cooking, the hobby I've been at the longest is reading. My siblings are all a lot older than me, so I was reading long before kindergarten, and I started reading the books they were reading in junior high and high school when I was still in elementary. I've always loved books,especially really old, really fat ones: Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, you get the idea. In my opinion, the best books are over a hundred years old, or at least fifty. That's not to say I don't read the newbies too—Harry Potter, Twilight, A Series of Unfortunate Events—they're fun, they just aren't the best books I've ever read.

What I love in a book is something that takes me to a time or a place that I'm unfamiliar with and makes me feel like I'm there. Or, even better, puts me in the mind of someone completely unlike myself, and makes me see what they see, feel what they feel, think what they think, understand the way they see the world. I try to be non-judgemental, because you never know what a person's experiences have been or why they act the way they do, and I think these kinds of books help me to be more understanding of others. A couple of books that I've read in the last few months are particularly good at this: The Catcher in the Rye and One Flew Over the

Cuckoo's Nest. The characters in these books are far from my sheltered naïve self, but I felt I could still understand where they were coming from.

I especially appreciate books now that I don't have the opportunity to be in school. Another thing I've always loved is learning, and I hope to be able to continue finding out about the world in my own "classroom" built with books rather than bricks. I learned more about the Civil War in two days reading The Killer Angels than in 13 years of school, but my lack of good social science and history teachers is a different story. The point is, now that I have more time on my hands, I'm going to try to start being an avid reader like I used to be before the days of crazy homework and sports and clubs. I'm starting with these—all of the books left in our house that I still haven't ever read:

Things I Like to Take Pictures of ~ Bugs

I know, I know, GROSS. But it's about the closest I've got to "wildlife" here in Lincoln, so it'll have to do.