Pranks and more pranks!

Okay, so didn't get as much done last weekend as I had hoped. Got a little bit done on the application and not much more on the costume... But Saturday morning I had to help some people who ran out of gas on my road, and as a reward I treated myself to a cupcake. There is a rival cupcakery to the one I went to with Mom and Dad, so I tried that one. Also delicious, as it turns out. Peanut butter & jelly and white chocolate raspberry are tasty delights.


Then headed to Yellow Springs to meet up with the gang. We hung out at Ye Olde Gulch and celebrated my friend Ingrid (left) taking the GRE and Stephanie (middle) being awesome.

Monday morning Amanda and I pranked Jason! We bought a computer mouse at Goodwill and set it in jello, then replaced the mouse in his office with this jello-y one. I could not keep a straight face. He was trying to figure out who did it, and told me to look at him. I told him that it was impossible for me to look at him at that time... Enough said.

Our friend Aly's boyfriend Nate stopped by. He showed us his whisker biscuit... on the bow... Who knew?

We did some exploring in the attic! Snakeskins abound. I say, make yourselves comfortable. Eat some mice, even...

This morning was rough at work. Amanda and I had to go on a delightful hike in beautiful weather... Sigh. Life is just hard sometimes. This is a tough job, but clearly someone has to do it... You're welcome. We were on a mission, checking geocaching sites, searching for scat & other animal signs for the winter exhibits, and looking for kingnut hickory nuts. Dee-light-fulllllll!

I decided I'd try to walk out on this log, because Amanda did it and it looked so easy... Bad choice. This is a picture of me actually frozen a few feet in. I couldn't even turn my head back to look while Amanda snapped the shot. She had to walk out there and come get me. Ridiculous.

Score! Found the shellbark hickory and all its tasty nutmeats!

This little bro was hippity hopping around. Amanda heard him scooting around in the crunchy leaves.

Aaaaaaaand while Amanda and I were out hiking around... Jason was busy getting me back for Monday's prank. I came into my office to find my keyboard broken in half! AHHH! He got me. Well played, sir.

Finally finished my costume tonight and can't wait to get corny in Springfield this weekend!

Date Night

Whew! What a week! Glad it's finally the weekend. We had 5th graders all week and they were pretty sassy, but luckily my group on Friday was awesome so I ended on a high note. Always nice to begin a weekend on a high note. I have grand plans for the weekend to actually get some stuff done... I'll post an update later to see what actually goes down. Grand plans include: working on grad school application, finishing Halloween costume (see below for progress), carving a pumpkin, making jelly, laundry, tidying my room, part one of baking a cushaw pie, working on clay projects... But I'll be lucky if I get 1 or 2 of those things done, because I have serious plans to rock out with Stephanie Zanati later today!

Anyway, I was in working on some projects at the clay studio and Missy, my instructor, gave me a bunch of green tomatoes. I figured it was high time I tried some fried green tomatoes, what with how much I love the movie and all. So I fried some up. Here are the result. (We decided they were better with ranch.)



Working away, slowly but surely, on my Halloween costume. The sewing maching broke so it is much slower going than originally expected. Can you guess what the costume is? Did I say it in an earlier post? Who could say?

Yesterday after work Amanda and I got our fall on! We went to an orchard and picked up some apple cider, and then we went to a pumpkin patch! I hope I make time to carve it this weekend!

After we left ye olde pumpkin patch, we were trying to find a cupcakery so we could compare it with the other cupcakery in Milford, an accidentally made an illegal turn in front of a cop. The funny part was that we saw the no-turn sign and had just been talking about how we didn't know why you couldn't turn at the next street up... But, it was really for where we were turning. Ooooops. So of course the copper turned on his lights... but he was pretty nice about it, told me welcome to the neighborhood, and gave me the directions to the cupcakery. Haha. We did find the cupcakery, and went in, and they had just sold out of cupcakes 15 minutes earlier. Oh well. Maybe I'll find time to try it this weekend.

Date time! Amanda and I have been wanting to go to this Japanese restaurant, Ichiban, for quite sometime. http://www.ichibancinci.com/ It was wonderful! We got some fancy cocktails: Amanda had a pomegranate martini, and I had a cucumber mint martini. We went for the sushi, but also got some fried tofu and Amanda had some little duck skewers. :) Yum!

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I simply must get to work....... Have a good weekend!!

Megaloo comes to town

You heard it right, folks! One of my friends finally made the long trek out here to Ohio to visit. Megan arrived with bells on in the evening on Friday. We had a gay old time! We hit up the Hofbräuhaus for some delicious fried pickles and then gossiped and girl-talked late into the night! Saturday we ventured to Yellow Springs to see some friends and explore at Glen Helen. We went on a hike with Stephanie (see below) to the rare springs, the yellow springs, way down in Glen Helen, oh! It was, possibly, weather-wise, the best day ever in life (once again, see pic below). Saturday night we gathered up the gang and headed to Mr. Lee's for some delicious sushi! Shenanigans ensued as a kid projectile vomited all over the floor right behing my chair, our waitress almost barfed, a man played a saxaphone for us and honked my nose, Jess made me tell the story about when I got water down the wrong pipe and tried not to cough and ended up making an absurd noise (involuntarily), and then the sax player mournfully played Taps for the bachelorette party at the table next to us... Good times were had by all. Then it was off to the Gulch for some good old reminiscing and cheap drinks. On Sunday, I begged Megan not to leave and even threatened to lock her in the basement, but she talked me out of it and made her way back to Illinois. :( But it was a great weekend!



Unfortunately, the other intern, Aurora, isn't really into environmental ed so she quit to get another job. Fortunately, we got a new intern today: Dusty Fox. As you can see, he was already hard at work with the old highlighter. We expect a lot of good things from him.

Today was Amanda's last baking class. :( She brought home a snazzy chocolate cake with blackberry filling. She decorated it herself!! It was scrumptious. I think I may have neglected to say that last week she brought home truffles and chocolate-covered strawberries! They didn't last long enough to get a picture...

Finally! I've been taking a clay class for 6 weeks and I finally got a finished product back! Check it out! An owl, sitting in a dead tree...

But that's not all! They're really salt & pepper shakers! Weeehoohooo! So cute.

I have a whole bunch of other ceramic projects that I'm finishing up, but I was so glad to finally get this one back!! :)

Foodie Fantastic

Amanda and I were treated to a night of fabulous experiences courtesy of our foodie boss, Jason. Jason is a farmer and wild edibles expert (in my humble opinion) and we spent the evening getting to take a small part in his busy food-filled life! When we got to the house we immediately got to work mashing persimmons from a local tree to make a persimmon pudding.



Jason also grows shittake mushrooms on logs in his house. Unfortunately neither he nor his family actually likes mushrooms, so....... Amanda and I reaped the bounty! He handed us a knife and told us to go to town! Of course, you didn't have to tell us twice. I can already smell the stir-fry!

One of Jason's many activities is bee keeping. We helped him extract the honey from the honeycombs. First we had to use little scraper tools to un-cap them.

Then we loaded up the honeycomb-filled boards (I don't know what those are called...) into a giant spinner. Amanda likened it to a giant salad spinner. With the force of the spinning, the honey flies out and splatters the inside, eventually dripping down and pooling in the bottom.

More scraping.

Here's an inside view of the spinner with honey at the bottom in all of it's sticky, golden goodness.

So after we spun all of the honey out of the honeycombs, we opened the spout and collected all of that liquid gold in buckets. After filtering it, it was ready to be jarred! I'm hoping to eventually make some mead with it!

Look at this bounty we brought home from a night at Jason's house! Persimmon pudding, a bag of shittake mushrooms, some sage, a bag of dry snow-capped beans, and three giant jars of golden honey!!! Foodie fantastic, indeed!

Busy Bees

It has been quite the busy weekend for me and the wifey! We had to work Saturday morning and then it was straight to Yellow Springs to go to the Street Fair. We had some fair food and perused the crafts (I bought some alpaca yarn from a local alpaca farm). We met up with all of our Glen friends there, and also went to some sweet local Halloween stores before heading back home to Milford!

That's where the craziness insues. We planned on having a leisurely day of activites and relaxing, but the relaxing part was not to be. We left the house with the intention of going to a farmers market and to brunch, but instead it went like this: 1. farmers market (got a beautiful bouquet of dried flowers and tasted pawpaw gelato); 2. brunch (delicious pancake full of oats, wheat germ, craisins, walnuts, almonds, and raisins); 3. bookstore (got a cool book about different crochet squares!); 4. Trader Joe's (yummy tamales and more!); 5. Fresh Market (surprisingly didn't buy anything, although I tried a jalapeno-stuffed olive, which was quite tasty); 6. Kroger (to buy canning supplies, only to find they were much more expensive than Meijer); 7. Meijer (so many canning supplies!)... Five hours later, we were finally back home ready to begin all of the things we'd originally planned! (See below.)

First things first. Our boss gave me a basket of tomatillos from his garden so I decided to make salsa. This process began with broiling the tomatillos, jalapenos and garlic cloves.

After being mixed with many onions and cilantro, here is the final product! Get on my tamales from Trader Joe's, salsa!

Meanwhile, Amanda was making a batch of jalapeno jelly. Way to add that pectin, wifey!

After I finished canning my salsa, I figured I had time to make another batch of jalapeno jelly myself. You might ask, how did you chop all of those jalapenos without gloves??? Welcome to the Amanda Chisholm technique: putting plastic bags on your hands! Hey, it worked.

Phew! That's a lot of canning! Note: apple butter, one batch of jalapeno jelly, tonatillo salsa, and the other batch of jelly! But hey folks, we're not done yet!

That's right! We've been waiting to do this for awhile! Making cheese! With my expert supervision, Amanda cooked up some mozzarella in no time!

So, if you were worried we'd starve this winter, don't be! We have enough jalapeno jelly to last us. Haha. Unfortunatly I ran out of time to do anything else today. Darn it, I guess that means that cleaning my room will just have to wait... :)

Kimby gets married... Mom & Dad come to Ohio/Happy Birthday Mom!

Whoops! Slipping on my blogging duties! But there's so much going on here, what with people getting married, taking a ceramics class, eating Amanda's goods from her baking class, visiting people, people visiting me, baking, canning, knitting like crazy, and of course, working! Having a blast though!

Kimby Ann got married! Amazing! It was a great wedding- super short- with a fun reception. Crazy to see the friend I grew up with get married! Congratulations Kimby! Here I am with the beeeeautiful bride!




Here are the even more beautiful mothers: Mother of the Bride & Mother of the... Awesome? Yes.

After the wedding in the Chicago area, I headed back down to Springfield for a day. Went to the Edward's Place Fine Arts Fair. I taught art camp there this summer, and was pleased to see this butterfly sculpture finished and mounted outside for all to behold! Made of recycled materials, one man gathers what another man spills!

Oh yeeeeah! Amanda's baking class = :) Baguettes!!!

Yep, that's my boss. The guy in the chicken hat. With the chicken puppet. Haha. He's really cool, as you can see here, as he demonstrates a teaching strategy for us interns. (Comparing school children to chickens, no doubt.)

Hanging out with Amanda and Stephanie at Oktoberfest in Dayton! It was the bee's knees!

Mouthwatering puff pastry treats from Amanda's baking class!

I thought this was super cool! The giant swallowtail butterfly caterpillar looks like goose poop!

Oh heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey jalapenos! What up? I wonder what will happen to you...

Ah yes, turned into 6 delicious jars of jalapeno jelly! Perfect with cream cheese and some crackers!

Oh heeeeeey pears! I wonder what will become of you...

As suspected: a caramelized puff pastry pear tart! (Excellent with vanilla ice cream.) Don't mind if I do. Had some of this tasty treat when Mom and Dad and Piper came to visit last weekend!

We had so much fun! Piper got to have a slumber party at my house all three nights and he didn't keep me up at all... :) Haha. (He missed his mom.) We went to Jungle Jim's (a food store that carries ridiculous amounts of food from all around the world) and then had dinner at the Hofbräuhaus in Newport, KY.

We also went hiking at the Nature Center! The fall weather was absolutely perfect! Luckily we just missed the rain.

We went to a cupcakery in downtown Milford to sample their goods! So tasty with flavors like lemon raspberry, coconut lime, vanilla, chocolate truffle, and cafe au lait! We also checked out a local orchard to grab some cider, and later we had a fire at my house and drank hot apple cider. With rum. Oh yeah.

Finished up with some maple bundt cake made with syprup from the Nature Center trees! It was a perfect weekend and a great way to celebrate Mom's birthday, which is today! Happy Birthday Mom. I love you!!!!

That's all for now, folks! More to come soon (I hope)!