The Month of May

Today, nothing special happened. I went to work, I came home, gave Pokie a bath and cleaned my room. In fact, nothing that exciting has happened around here for a while- that is if you don't count coming home to the sight of a dead chipmunk head on the front stoop. I guess I should be grateful my cats love us enough to give us gifts...

Hmm. Let's sum up the month of May so far. In a nutshell-
Rachel and her boyfriend went to prom about a million times, and Maryann took 30 million photos.

I did a photo shoot for the Schmidt family the other weekend in an attempt to grow my photography portfolio, and we all ended up getting harassed by an evil nun. This is not an exaggeration. We threw a few rocks in the lake, and she came out screaming and yelling "Shooo!! Shame on you!! I'm calling the police!" She was crazy. This is no lie. It's one of those things that is too crazy to be believable, but sadly it's true. Nuns can be fierce.

A few of my old roommates from UK graduated, and I dominated a cornhole tournament. This is rare, so I thought I'd mention it.

In other news, John (my boyfriend, not my Dad) graduated and got his Master's degree. Pokie began balding on her tail. Matt came home from college and instantly started writing threatening notes on his leftovers in the fridge... and my Dad spent some time screaming at the Reds on TV. Oh, and I started getting really bad allergies. It's a natural part of the spring time for me.

Well, I guess more happened than I realized. And it just thundered. So that's exciting I guess. PS, Hello Elisa. If you read this whole thing, I am incredibly proud of you.

It's back

Per the request of my many blog fans (...or just my favorite little cousin Elisa!) I have decided to give my "day-to-day blog" its chance to make a comeback. Now that I'm done with my Master's class until the fall, I have slightly more free time and so can justify doing this...

Today is Easter, but it's rainy and ugly outside and besides having multiple hilariously tear-inducing conversations with family members today, I don't have anything too thrilling to post. With that being said, everyone check out my "photo portfolio" and see my attempts at being a good slash artsy photographer: CLICK IT!

Peace

3rd annual feast

I haven't written in a few weeks, and so now I am way behind in writing about events close to the time they happened. Even though I have other things I wanted to write about, I'm going to skip them over and write about the Third Annual Thanksgiving Feast my roommates and I hosted at the Grove (our house). It took place on Tuesday night the 17th, and we had an awesome turnout. I think about 30 people total. We've done this event the last 2 years; it's a fun tradition.

The premise of "The Feast" is that we have all of our college friends over to basically do nothing other than eat insane amounts of food. Us roommates provide the majority of the food but many of the guests bring a dish to share too. We spent all week planning on what food we needed, who would make it, what time to cook it, etc. You may not realize, but tons of planning was involved in order to successfully pull off this event. Christina spent all weekend coming up with the list of food items, assigning it to people, and following up on it. Kristine, Danielley and I also spent a while cleaning up our house and making sure we had enough seating, etc. In my opinion, it looked awesome.

The day of the event, Kristine and Anna (Julia's sister) basically devoted their whole day to planning out the "oven/stove schedule" and baking the turkey, casseroles, and many other dishes. I as usual did some of my OCD driven cleaning, and then when all of the food and desserts were prepared the guests arrived! I was excited because John made it down to Lexington even though it was a week night. It took some rearranging of his schedule for him to be able to come, but he did, just because I told him it would mean a lot to me if he could be there and witness it's amazingness for the first time. So, everyone hung out and talked for a while, and we were all very excited when the food was finally ready. As the title of the event suggests, it really was a "feast". There was enough food for 30 people to get two plates and stuff themselves full- not to mention dessert! I always really like when we do this because when we get everyone together before we eat we say a quick "Thanksgiving" prayer, and it makes me realize how grateful I am to have so many amazing people in my life. I feel like I am very lucky to have so many great friends who have been around through the years and who I still can always have a fun and hilarious time with.

So, after the food was rapidly consumed and seconds were downed, it was time to play the Thanksgiving guessing game we've played the last 2 years. Everyone writes down on a piece of paper one thing they're thankful for, and then one person (traditionally Danielle) reads each one out loud, and everyone else is supposed to guess who wrote what. Some of the papers are genuine things, but the majority are sarcastic and/or sexual. It is usually a hilarious game, and this year it was no different. There were a few slips read that caused everyone in the room to die of laughter- if you were there you know what I'm talking about! We also did a traditional group photo after dinner, one serious and one funny.

After the game a lot of the guests had to leave, but for those who remained and weren't busy cleaning and doing dishes (sorry to my roommates, but someone had to be out of the kitchen entertaining the guests!) we had a fun time playing the game "Apples to Apples". I was really happy with how the evening turned out. The food was fantastic, we had a good amount of leftovers, and a lot of friends showed up I hadn't seen in a while. It was definitely a success! It was a little bittersweet though because this is the last time all of us roommates will be in Lexington for Thanksgiving. Some of the girls might do it again next year, but I won't be here hosting it...

crafty costumes

Even though it was a while ago, I am so proud of my Halloween costume I felt it necessary to pay it tribute in the form of writing about it! The idea for this group costume came from Danielle, who decided we should all be feminized versions of our favorite male super-heroes. Danielle would be Superman-woman, Christina would be Spiderman-woman, and I would be Batman-woman. You could purchase a skanky version of our costumes online for about $60, so we decided to follow in our traditions of Halloweens past and go the home-made route instead. This ended up to be a lot more time consuming than we would have ever guessed. Once we had a general idea for what our outfits should look like, I wrote up lists of items we'd need to make them ourselves. The catch was we had to be able to do it all without the usage of sewing (since none of us know how). Danielle and I spent 4 hours at the mall hunting for colorful fishnets and a red skirt, but nothing came up. Frustrating! The next day Tian and I hunted around Wal-Mart for about 2 hours before finally gathering everything we'd need. Surprisingly, the majority of our supplies ended up coming from our own closets.

We were making these costumes for a Halloween party at our neighbors house here in Lexington, and so the day of the party involved several hours of preparation. For Tian's costume, we needed a spidey eye mask. Free-hand sketching it, guessing the measurements, cutting it from felt and then attempting to make a strap around Tian's head was more challenging than you'd think! I also had to make Bat ears for myself. After several failed attempts with felt I settled for using black cardboard which I taped to a black head-band. I had to be careful they didn't look like cat ears and that they were properly spaced. This was also more difficult than you'd ever think. So, in case you wanted to know, here is the run down on how we creatively made our costumes:
Bat-Woman : I bought a black dress, so that part was easy. I then free-hand drew the bat symbol (which I am pretty proud of!), cut it from yellow felt, and used double sided tape to stick to my dress. I tried to find yellow fishnets, but had to settle for black. I made arm bands by cutting up black felt and pinning it together (I later regretted this when the pins kept snagging my tights). I made the headband for the ears, I bought a yard of black fabric, cut up the bottom to be pointy, then rolled the edges and pinned it to my dress for my cape. I then added finishing touches of black pumps, black nail polish, yellow earrings (same one as Danielle and Tian's but in a different color) and cutting and pinning yellow ribbon for a belt. I am pretty pleased with how everything turned out. I definitely have a new found love for fake eyelashes too!

Spider-Woman : You already know about the mask. That was the worst part. It had to look like Spiderman's eye shape but also fit her head, and I didn't have anything to look off of. But we did it! Tian's costume was definitely the most challenging to make. For the top, she bought a child's costume, and we cut the bottom off. We then cut off the sleeves to make it into a cute spider shirt, and then used the extra fabric to be her arm bands. She had blue earrings, blue nail polish, and a blue ring- and luckily we found her some red fishnets. We could not find a blue skirt anywhere so she bought a yard of shiny blue fabric, and we then experimented with rolling, folding, and cutting it until Tian finally invented a way to do it. She did something with threading string and using safety pins I believe. It took a while. It was a little weird at the top but her belt covered it up and made it look great! I think her skirt turned out nicely.

Super-Woman : Danielle's costume started out one way, and then the day of the party Kristine discovered a different way to make it. For her outfit she used a red dress in her closet that had a white top, and she covered the top with a blue sports bra. The bottom of the dress then just looked like a red skirt. She had gold ribbon in her room, so that became her belt. I then drew, cut, taped, and pinned yellow and red felt to make her Super-man logo. She also had the earrings and corresponding blue fishnets, along with blue fake eye-lashes and a french-manicure with the colors of blue and red. She did the same thing as me for her cape- pinning fabric. She then added a finishing touch of Julia's bright red heels.

Our other preparations for the party involved copious amounts of eye-makeup, glitter, a first attempt at fake eyelash application, felt cutting galore, and using over 40 safety pins. Theresa drove down to join us in getting ready, and then John made a celebrity appearance at the end. He learned he was coming to the party at 7pm that night, and it was 80 miles away from his house! Theresa's costume was awesome, very authentic- and John's costume was authentically creepy! It's not in the picture, but he had a real gas mask he wore with the camo.

The party ended up being a lot of fun. The girls who hosted it (The Arlington Ladies- Brittany, Chelsea, Liz) had lots of good food, decorations, and a strobe light that ended up being great for dancing. There was a good turnout, and it was definitely fun to dance and party it up with all of our friends. At one point it was like a mini high-school reunion too. A lot of girls we graduated with were in town for the party. We got many compliments on our costumes from everyone too. It was, all in all, a very fun time. Lots of work, but worth it.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

vino y queso

I am posting this a bit late considering this event happened about 10 days ago, but I wanted to write about it nonetheless. I randomly had the idea about a month ago that I wanted to host a wine and cheese party here at the Grove. So, last Tuesday, I had about 15 people come over (14 of which were girls) to hang out and do something different on a typical boring week-night.

The premise of the event was that everyone who was coming had to bring one bottle of their choice, and that I would provide cheese and other snacks. Then, at the end of the night we'd vote on our favorite and the winner would get a prize. Christina ended up being my co-hostess, which I am glad about, because it was a lot more time consuming than I initially realized. After my classes that day we went to the store and stocked up on about 7 different kinds of cheeses, grapes, apples, crackers, and some candy for the prize. We also spent a long time cleaning, swiffering, and vacuuming our house. These duties had been neglected for a while, so it was definitely a good thing we did it. Old houses just seem to get dirty really quickly. We arranged some Halloween decorations and I set up my pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, and then we lit some candles too. In my opinion, it looked very nice! (though I am probably biased)

Tian and I then spent a while slicing up the cheese. We arranged it in this bowl and then I used toothpicks to make little flags labeling what was what. Somehow, (I can't imagine why!) Tian got stuck cutting the nasty smelling cheese- gorgonzola and blue cheese- because those smells repulse me and make me feel sick. I'm glad she did it because we realized that it doesn't slice very well, so she ended up molding, or "balling" the cheese up. We found this to be hilarious for some reason. Maybe because we just laugh easily in general? Not sure.

We also had fun getting dressed up for the event. I told people to wear nice clothes because I don't feel like as a college student I have too many chances to wear cute outfits around. When people started showing up I turned on some nice "sophisticated" music in the background, and then we started opening the wine. We had cups for everyone to label and then we began eating the cheese and fruit and sampling everyone's wine. Theresa drove down from Northern Kentucky for the party, and I'm glad she did! It was good to have the old group together because I don't see a lot of my friends very often anymore due to med school, people graduating and leaving town, etc. We had some good times and good conversations though, and then a few hours later the time came to vote!

Each bottle had a number, and I went around and asked people to tell me their choice. The results: 1st place- Kristine with a bottle of Riesling. (I think the most expensive bottle we had there was 8$, so this wasn't necessarily a high-class wine tasting, just a fun one. Plus since it was mainly females the voting was a bit prejudiced towards the sweet "girly" tasting wines.)
2nd place- Me! I had a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. I only lost by one vote. Hmph.
3rd place- Danielle- she had a bottle of pink wine called "Pink Truck"

Kristine was awarded the prize of a pumpkin bucket with candy, and since she lives with me I wasn't too upset because I'm sure I can "borrow" some of the candy... All in all the event was a success. I received a lot of compliments which was definitely appreciated. Hosting events is oftentimes an under-appreciated thankless job (which I well know) I have always been one to host way too many gatherings and events in general. So, it is nice to be recognized once in a while. If you were there, thanks for coming! Maybe we'll do it again sometime.