Warm, Fuzzy, Nostalgia...

     Oh my goodness, a blog in the afternoon?  This can't be!  IT IS!

     This is what happens on a relaxing day with my mom.  We're watching television and I have my computer out, and my screen saver is a slideshow of my pictures.  Sometimes, a picture will come up and it will remind me of how I felt when it was taken.

     Today brought a particularly hilarious breed of Warm-Fuzzies, when I caught a glipse of this on my screen...

   This wonderfully delightful image was captured by my good friend Ashley.  On this day, we drove from San Diego to Los Angeles to wait in line at Lance Bass's book signing at Borders at The Grove.  You have to understand that from the first time I was introduced to *NSYNC's music, until approximately this moment, Lance Bass was my biggest celebrity crush.  Go ahead, its okay to laugh. 

     Anyway, the thing I love most about this picture is how it absolutely captures the essence of the moment.  It is written all over my face.  There he was, Lance Bass, in person, right in front of me.  I had dreamed of this moment a million times, and it was really happening.  In my imaginations of this moment, I am sorry to report, severely overestimated my actual abilities to be charming and clever upon meeting someone I idolized as much as I did Lance.

     He spoke first (a direct comment about the t-shirt I was wearing), and that was it.  I was absolutely unglued.  I had been hyperventilating for some time already (yes, really), so I kissed my hopes of appearing charming and normal goodbye.  The sentence I had prepared in my head had suddenly erased itself from my memory, and any chance of a clever substitute was long gone. 

     My brain was screaming at me.  "WORDS!! SAY WORDS!! SPEAK YOU IDIOT, SPEAK!!"  The pressure was building since my allotted time with Lance would soon end to make room for the next person in line -- which in this case, happened to be Ashley.  Wasn't it nice of her to let me go first?  Without any other solution, in the interest of time, my brain went on autopilot and concocted a phrase that would most precisely get my point across.  "I love you.  Can I have a hug?"

     I'm not exaggerating.  I really said that. Out loud.  Of course, my brain immediately scolded me for it.  "WHAT??? You have spent almost a decade dreaming of this exact moment, and THAT is how you're gonna leave an impression?!"  In point of fact, he did give me the hug I asked for and my book now bears his autograph and a wristband bookmark. 

     So I dedicate this post to you, Ashley.  Thank you so much for capturing such a fantastic memory to be treasured (and laughed at) for the rest of my life.

Adventures in Baking Land!!

     As I mentioned before, I love to cook.  Love, Love, LOVE to cook.  The kitchen is my playground, and cooking relaxes me (a great comfort for the anxiety that comes from moving back in with my parents after 6 years away)...*ahem.*  Anyway, I expect there will be many more cooking and or food related posts, so maybe I'll make it a weekly thing.  We'll see how things go...

     A few years ago, I made a cake for my dad, with a pineapple image piped on top -- an inside joke that goes way back into my childhood. I had never attempted piping icing before, but I watch a lot of the Food Network.  It came out a lot better than I expected it to, and so, a tradition was born.  When someone got cake, my job was to decorate it.  I'm still in very basic stages, but I do sometimes manage to impress even myself.  And I'm a tough judge.

The cake that started it all...

A cake I made for my Gamma's 90'th birthday...

I tried my hand at vertical piping...

     So, tonight was my Aunt's birthday party, and my job was (of course) to decorate the cake.  It took a while before we my mom and I came up with a good, personal theme or element to design the cake around.  She lives in Vegas and likes to gamble, and lately she's favoring electronic poker.  So we decided on a poker themed cake.  We found a great deck of cards, a special edition World Series of Poker set, and created a Royal Flush to sit on top of the cake (and made sure the glue holding the cards together was non-toxic).  The sides would have stacked poker chips, and the candle "holders" would be card suits.  The drawing was a good start, and I was confident that I could take it on.  Due to unforeseen circumstances (an uncomfortably hot kitchen, and not enough time) certain elements of the cake did not come out quite like I'd hoped, but here are some images of tonight's adventure...

  

She tells a joke better than anyone in my family.

Her nickname for me.  Also check out the back of the cards...

Things I Learned:

• When using red in a piping design, shell out the extra few bucks for pre-colored red icing.  It's not worth the hassle to mix it yourself, a la Wilton Icing Coloring if you want a true red color.
• Let the frosting on the cake set a little (refrigerate it for a while) before attempting to pipe on to it.  You will be far less likely to blend frosting into your piping.
• Make sure the temperature of your work area is cool.  The higher the heat, the more likely your frosting is to melt, thus making it more difficult to be precise.

Helpful Tips:

• It is totally okay if you don't have a piping bag and tips, or pre-colored icing (the selection at most grocery stores is pretty limited, so I use Wilton Icing Coloring to mix my own colors).  Plastic baggies work just fine if you pack the icing into a corner and cut the tip off.  Added benefit: Any size hole you want.
• Remember, the bigger the hole, the faster the icing will come out.

     I hope you have enjoyed my adventure in the kitchen today.  Coming soon: Home-Made Ice Cream!

I wonder if there's a "Complete Idiot's Guide to Doing Your Hair..."

So here we are again, in the wee, small hours of the morning, and I'm wide awake.  Freshly finished with my nightly attempt to shrink myself back down to "Skinny Ali," I decided blogging was a great way to cool down.

Today was pretty eventful, drove down to see my cousins and hang out.  My Cousin Face (our mutual nickname for each other) was teaching me how to do my make-up and hair like a pin-up girl so that by the time Halloween rolls around, I should be able to do it myself.  For me, you should understand, this is ridiculously ambitious.

Let me preface this by first telling you that I am a self-proclaimed hair retard.  Probably because I never had anyone to show me how, I just had a lot of girlfriends who wanted to play with my hair, so I let them have fun and didn't pay much attention.  I only JUST learned how to curl my hair by myself on Saturday!  I'm 24 years old.  That's a little pathetic, no?  I was however, very proud of my accomplishment and decided to take pictures immediately before my pretty curls realized what was going on and retreated back to their familiar state of straight and boring...

I'm so proud of me!

...and then I decided to put on a little make-up, just for kicks

So as for today's lesson, Cousin Face did both my make-up and my hair for me.  She did, at least, explain what she was doing as she was doing it, so that some information might actually manage to sink in.  The lesson in make-up was a cake walk.  I am totally confident in my abilities to pull it off.  The hair however... not so much.  I watched her do it.  I paid attention.  I thought to myself, "hey, that looks way easier than I thought it would..." imagining for a moment that my new hair-curling superpowers made me some kind of overnight hair genius. "Even I can do that..."  Wrong.

After pictures were taken and I returned home, I decided to take off all my make-up, brush out my hairspray infused locks, and try to pull off at least the make-up and the pin-curl rolling on my own.  The make-up was easy, just as I thought it would be.  I moved on to attempt the pin curls, figuring that I had an advantage since my hair had been done like that for the better part of the afternoon.  Maybe, I'd get lucky and my hair would just find its way back to the position it had been in mere hours before.  Nope.  I stood for about an hour rolling and unrolling the same section of hair until I had FINALLY managed to get it in some likeness of what it had been.  It wasn't entirely horrifying, just mostly terrible.  Also kind of a waste of hairspray.

So, like I said, here we are, at 5am (a time no one should EVER see unless they have not yet gone to bed, as I have not) and I'm about ready to force myself to relax and sleep.  One of these days I'll get my sleep schedule back to normal, but for now, off to Wonderland I go...

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things..."

That's the plan, anyway. 

Of course, now that I've said that, my mind is blank.  Or maybe I'm just delirious.  I have been musing about this blog--what I would call it, what it would look like, what I would write about--for approximately the last 36 hours, and seeing as it is 3:20am at the moment, my brain is not operating at full speed.  However, this is only my first post, so I suppose that's okay.

That being said, I can at least explain to you that I am a girlie, perfectionist, left-handed nerd.  I think too much, but I love to dream.  I love theatre, and movies, and I'm convinced that there is a part of my brain that has devoted itself to retaining absurd amounts of related trivia.  I have recently discovered a passion for cooking, and all things food.  Well, okay, I always had a thing for food.

A few more quick things before I go:

• I have plans to make this blog look a lot cuter.  It bothers me that it isn't done, but it's almost 4am, so I'll deal for now.
• No, Alice in Wonderland is not my favorite book, movie, or Disney Character.  The name "Allison Wonderland," however, has managed to stick with me since I was a kid.
• I really enjoy writing.  It makes me feel smart.

So to sum up this delirious, expository, initial post, I will say this:  I am at a really weird place in my life, so I figure why not share my awkward and hilarious journey with the world.  No sense keeping it all to myself when I could be providing perfect strangers with high quality entertainment.  Did I mention I speak sarcasm?  Oh no, I've started to ramble.  I think I'll shut up now.