Oy vey

Two typical (almost daily) "conversations" that drive me NUTS!!!!

When answering the phone at work:

Caller: Can I speak with M please?
Me: May I ask who is calling?
Caller: <insert company that is obviously a solicitor>
Me: He is not in his office right now, can I leave him a message?
Caller: That's not necessary, does he have a personal assistant?
Me: (thinking-wtf there is 4 people that work here) No he does not.
Caller: Well maybe you can help me, I need to verify your address.
Me: (thinking, if my boss would have taken the time for this call and you ask for address verification, he would be PO'd at you for wasting his time) Sure...
Caller: Okay, you are at <insert OLD office address here>
Me: Yep!
Caller: Okay I need your job title, are you the secretary?
Me: No...
Caller: Assistant?
Me: No, I guess you can put drafter.
Caller: Uh, what?
Me: Just put assistant.
Caller: <rambling about the call being recorded and something about a free subscription>
Me: Okay, bye!


When ordering in a drive-thru:

Worker: Order when ready.
Me: Okay can I get a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich and a side salad?
Worker: Southwest salad?
Me: No, <repeat order>.
Worker: Southern Chicken salad?
Me: <YELLING ORDER>
Worker: Southern sandwich then, is that all?
Me" ........and a SIDE SALAD!!!!

Crafty Challenge 1: Sarah's Yummy Pumpkin Bread

Another entry (yes, better late than later guys...for my feeling of self-worth at least-lol!) from Sarah @ Sarah said. She made some yummy pumpkin bread for the challenge, complete with some amazing PR skills, and cutie pie pictures :) Thanks Sarah, I hope you're going to send some down to Bako! (Hey I see that RR cookbook....)

I Am Ecstatic

Yesterday I booked a flight for myself and Chris to go to Michigan the first week of December, for a whole week!

I know you're like, uh, Michigan? Why the heck would you be excited about going there..in DECEMBER?! Well, a few reasons!

For one, I haven't been on a vacation (more than a weekend trip to Shaver) since two summers ago. I know that's kind of whiny of me but I have needed a long break from work for a long time. Mental health, people! I also loooooooove flying (Steph is gonna kick me for saying that).

Oh and the most important reason would be that I finally get to meet all of Chris' family. I kind of alluded to this the other day, but in short, we met online and I have been there once (before he moved out here to CA), but we weren't "dating" or whatever so I didn't meet them. So, Chris hasn't seen his family since June of 2006 - wtf! That's forever, and I would die if I hadn't seen my family in even a month.

Why we haven't been out there...mostly lack of money and ability for him to take vacation time. I've been wanting to go for a long time, obviously, because we are serious and I feel like there's a part of him I do not know. And that makes me sad. So this is going to be really good for us [oh and next step to getting closer to this I hope ;) ]

Super Simple Apple Crisp

A yummy fall treat :)

Cinnamon Apple Crisp
Original recipe found here

Ingredients
1 cup packed brown sugar,
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
3-1/2 cups Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced

1 cup all purpose flour (I used half wheat flour)
1 cup sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes



Step #1: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Butter the bottom of a 13x9x2-inch baking dish.


Step #2: Prepare apple slices. I used 7 apples. Choppity chop.



Step #3: In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon and apples. Toss the mixture until the apples are coated. Transfer mixture to baking dish.



Step #4: Combine flour, 1 cup sugar, and butter in a medium sized bowl. Use your fingertips to blend the mixture until until a coarse meal forms. Spread the mixture evenly over the apples. (My butter was a little too soft I think...my bad).



Step #5: Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temp to 350 degrees F and bake another 25-30 minutes, until the topping is golden brown. Removed from oven and let rest for about 15 mins.




Step #6: Gobble down with some whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream (and perhaps some pumpkin ale?) :) Yummm!

ABC...easy as...123

A - Age: Twenty-three

B - Band listening to right now: Whaaaa I have to pick just one? I'm always listneing to Thrice/Coldplay/Minus the Bear. Umm I just set my ringtone as a new David Cook song :) Lol.

C - Career future: Who knows. I like where I am now.

D - Dad’s name: Robert (Bob) Kapral

E - Easiest person to talk to: that all depends, not gonna lie.

F - Favorite type of shoe: Flats for sure.

G – Grapes or Grapefruit: Grapes!

H – Hometown: Lancaster/Palmdale, California & Bako too. Born in Bako and moved to aforementioned places and moved back to Bako in 7th grade.

I – Instrumental talent: I haven't played in a long time. I was really good at piano, and I also took up drums for like a year, which I sucked at.

J – Juice of choice: Anything with blueberries. Unfiltered apple juice, and PULP-Y OJ! I love me some juice!

K – Koala Bear or Panda Bear: I don't know they are both cute! Gees!

L - Longest car ride ever: Like 9 hours up to Eureka, CA.

M – Middle name: Dawn ( the only person not Marie!)

N - Number of jobs you’ve had: One!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've worked at my current job since I was 17.

O- OCD traits: only one I can think of right now would be switching between doing work and checking the internet (emails, twitter, etc.), waaaaaaayy to often.

P - Phobia[s]: Spidersssss. Losing people I know.

Q - Quote: I don't know?! "That's what she said" ????.

R - Reason to smile: being loved, being fortunate, animals, having a place of your own, being independant. Lots of stuff!

S - Song you sang last: Uhhhh something that came on my iPod, can't even remember...

T - Time you wake up: Around 6:45-7:15 on weekdays, and the weekends it really depends...ususally like 8:30-9.

U - Unknown fact about me: I have a birthmark just below my tush. Lol.

V - Vegetable you hate: GREEN BEANS. BLECH!!!!! I seriously even tried to eat a tempura green bean this weekend and I spit it out. Yuck.

W - Worst habit: procrastinating and that OCD thing I talked about!

X - X-rays you’ve had: Teeth

Y - Yummiest food my belly likes: Um, any? :) Sweets, a little tooooooooooo much.

Z - Zodiac sign: Cancer

Crafty Challenge You Say?

Here is my project for my Craft Challenge. [You still have a day to do it!!!! :)]

Pumpkin and apple votives.
These were inspired by a picture I saw somewhere on the internet a few weeks ago.

Step 1: Buy some mini-pumpkins and apples. (Also find or buy a bucket to display them in, if you wish!)


Step 2: Cut holes in the tops of said pumpkins and apples, the size of your votives. Admire the cuteness of the little pun'kin stems and seeds!




Step 3: I decided to buy extra white pumpkins so I could paint them. I painted one black and one a shimmery brown.



Step 4: Place votives in your pumpkins and apples.



Step 5: Place everything carefully in a bucket 'o water.



Step 6: Light it up!!!!

PS - Obviously these will not to last a week without rotting...so, I'm going to have to do this again on Halloween day...darn! It was super easy though!

Wedding Inspiration

Because I am totally getting married soon, right??? :) Lauren has declared today "Wedding Wednesday" and asked her readers to blog about their wedding, or blog about a future wedding (aaaaaaannnnd, that would be ME).

A little bit of info. for everyone. My boyfriend Chris and I have been together for over 2 years, and we just bought a house together. I get asked all the time when we are going to get married, and I honestly do not know! We've been busy with too many other things, oh and the fact that I have never met his family. Yeah, we'll leave that for another blog (or you can just ask me).

Anyways, I've made a "wedding inspiration" mosaic, with just things I found all over the internet today when I was totally working! I don't know much but what I do know is: it will be in fall, it will be outdoors, in the evening, chocolate brown and purple...and that's about it. The pics speak for themselves.

Clicky to englarge!!!

Annnd...pray that bf doesn't read this ;)

Crafty Challenge #1: Steph's Pumpkin Project

Remember my Craft Challenge that you are all diligently working on? Yeah! That's what I thought. Reminder: send me links to your projects by Thursday, October 23th, and I will post them here :)

My good friend Steph was the first person I have seen to post what they did. Check out her blog post here to see her crafty loveliness in all of it's glory!!


How cute is that??? I don't know about you, but I'm going to have to go find me a white pumpkin!

Come and Knock on My Door...

Do you remember my ugly door??? Oh, let me remind you:


It wasn't that it was too ugly of a color, but it doesn't match the color of our house AT ALL. Teal does not match this blue! Plus the door was effed up and the GOLD door knob was tackalicious.

Well, we bought a new one this weekend. SO EXCITING! You know you're old when you get excited OVER A DOOR! :( Oh well.

Shhh, ignore the mess in the corner.

Originally I wanted to paint it dark, like black. Buuut, white goes much better with the trim and stuff. But we did get black door knob :)

Artsy Fartsy

I have some lovely friends who are artists, so this weekend we checked out their chalk drawings at Via Arte. Via Arte is an Italian street "painting" festival and this was it's 10th anniversary here in Bako. Basically artists come down and they have all these squares taped off, one for each artist to draw on. It's in a parking lot so they are down on their hands and knees drawing with chalk for 2-3 days. Both original and non-original drawings, teens to adults, and professional to non-professional artists.

Pretty intense right? I think so. Here are some pictures from our little excursion. My friend's had a 6'x12' (I think) square - yikers!

When we got there it was basically done.


Peace out.


My friend's bf working on their piece.


Rows of the big drawings.


I thought this castle was pretty spiffy, ignore the odd angle. Reminded me of Care Bears!

Let's Leave this to the Girl Scouts

I saw this recipe last week for the Girl Scout Samoas cookies...and lets just say I was pretty freaking excited to make them (they are the yummiest cookies EVER!). So I showed the recipe to my boyfriend, and he's been begging me to bake them all week. After work today I stopped at the store to pick up the few ingredients I was missing.

Onto the recipe and adventure.

Samoas
(also known as Caramel de-Lites)
Makes about 3 1/2 to 4 dozen

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
up to 2 tablespoons milk

Brown sugar, what are you doing there??? Oops...

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl.

Mix in flour, baking powder and salt at a low speed, next, the vanilla and milk, adding in the milk only as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky (you may not need any at all). Add in a bit of extra flour if your dough seems sticky.

It's easiest to roll the dough out in 2 or 3 batches (between pieces of wax (or parchment) paper to about 1/4-inch thickness (or a little thinner) using a 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make rounds.
I couldn't find my cookie cutterssssssssss...so, I rolled out small balls of dough and smushed them down with a lid :) worked like a charm. I'm ghetto like that.


Place on a parchment lined (or on silicone mat) baking sheet and make a hole in the center. I used the small end of a large round piping tip.
Um, sorry this picture is kind of perverted...moving right along...

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are very lightly golden brown around the edges. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet, to allow them to firm up slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Forgot to take a pic of the baked cookies, my bad...my bad.

Topping:
3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
12-ounces good-quality chewy caramels
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons milk
8 ounces dark or semisweet chocolate (chocolate chips will do)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees (F)

Spread coconut evenly on a rimmed baking sheet and toast 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden. Watch carefully, especially near the end of toasting time; the coconut toasts very quickly once it begins to become golden.

OMG...this toasted coconut smells and looks heavenly...if only I would have known what would become of this....

Cool on baking sheet, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

Oh, crap...I forgot to get the caramels. Proceed, for the next hour, begging boyfriend to go to the store for you. In which, he will finally give in, since you ARE baking these darn things for him.

Unwrap the caramels and place in a large microwave-safe bowl with milk and salt. Cook on high for 3-4 minutes, stopping to stir a few times to help the caramel melt.

When smooth, fold in toasted coconut with a spatula.

Using the spatula or a small offset spatula, spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 teaspoons per cookie. Reheat caramel for a few seconds in the microwave if it begins to firm up, to make it soft and spreadable once again.

After about 5 mins of trying really freaking hard to do this step, and 4 retarded looking cookies later...

.......................................................

WTF?? Those have to be the ugliest cookies I have ever attempted to make. This is where I get frustrated and give up, thank the boyfriend for getting the caramels but tell him he'll have to eat plain cookies and coconut caramel candies.

...and buy Samoas from the Girl Scouts next time they are in front of Vons.

I cry.

PS, not sure what happened here, as I am pretty much (usually) a great lil baker. If you so wish to try this out for yourself, make sure you go to the recipe I linked...and also make sure you have a few glasses of wine :)

Get Yo Craft On

Don't forgeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet: Crafty Challenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spread the word, yo!

How do you grocery shop?

I confess, I am one of those people who goes to the grocery store and basically only buys the items that are on sale. My favorite cereal isn't on sale? Guess I'm getting the one that is! (But I will splurge on that good cheese, yes I will!!!)

This is probably due to how I was raised. My mom had an index card file that was categorized where she would keep her coupons. My sister and I would help her clip all those coupons, then place them in the pertaining category in that file, at the same time removing any expired coupons. Though I know she doesn't do this anymore, it was pretty brilliant.

Unfortunately, so far since I've been on my own, I do not do the coupon thing. Coupons in the mail or paper...you're going in the trash (save the Linens 'n Things 20% coupon though!). I don't know why I never before thought about the coupon thing. Part of me didn't want to be that one at the grocery store holding people up while the cashier scans her 80 coupons.

But you know what? Who cares. Frugality = good. Saving more money = good. Especially in the financial crisis we're in today. And, the other part of me is...laaaaaazzzzyyy.

These thoughts have been consuming my head ever since I watched an episode on Oprah the other day about saving money, not using credit cards, etc. One guest they had on, known as Coupon Mom, shared tips on saving money at the grocery store. Easy thing that anyone can do. They followed her on a grocery store trip and she purchased $150 worth of goods...but only spent $60 something after coupon savings!!!!! Oh and, coincidentally, the day after I saw that show I ran across this great blog and her posts about all her shopping savings. If that's not enough inspiration, I don't know what is.

So, I'm going to start pushing myself that extra little bit to clip those coupons, or to find them online whenever I'm going to buy something. I figure it'll not only save my bank account and my sanity, but be a real saver in tough times (oh and, extra money to do more fun things!). Oh yeah, and pay off that dang credit card. And I think all that applies to every single person...no matter if you make $8/hour or $800/hour (Um, I wish!). Hey if you make that much money, you should be giving to charities and your extra coupon saving self and donate even more ;)

This week in TV

Remember when I used to do a summary of all the exciting shows that I watched during the week? Well we are back in that lovely fall/winter season again! What I've been watching lately: Project Runway, Top Model, Kitchen Nightmares and The Office (obv.)! I know there's other good stuff on too, I'm just not all on top of this lately with the new house!!! Wednesday and Thursday nights seem to be tv nights, though. So here goes.

Wednesday
America's Next Top Model
I never get toooo into this show until there's just a handful of girls left. Who are your favorites this season? I'm not completely sure yet to be honest. I think McKey is one of the best, and that's all that I'm pretty sure about. Sheena totally bugs the crap out of me though...I don't know what it is...ever since the beginning they had been talking about not liking how she gets all sexual looking in her photos, yet she hasn't been cut yet. Marjorie was bugging me with her whining..but after this past week I'm glad she did good, cause I kind like her. And PS, Tyra is just so weird. End.

Project Runway
This week was part one of the finale (sad panda!). I love love loved Leanne's wedding and bridesmaid's dresses!!!!!! Especially the bridesmaid dress...like, if those are for sale when I get married, totally want them.
Couldn't find a picture of the entire dress :( So, I know pretty much everyone doesn't like Kenley, but I think she did really good this episode both with her collection and her ATTITUDE. Jerrel and Korto both did really poorly on the challenge this episode...which was a bummer. I was pretty interested in Jerrel's clothes this season, but we had to say goodbye. So who do you think will win?!!?! I think Leanne will win, but I also think Kenley might be pretty close too!

Thursday
The Office
Um, where was PAM!?!? I was thinking, if I had to give this episode a grade, I'd give it a B-. Minus 10 points for no Pam, -5 points for only being 30 minutes and a few more points taken for because I think the beginning was kind of sloowwww (conference room scene). What would you grade it? My favorite moments were: Jim announcing the engagement (the tackle!!), Jim timing Dwight (and that creepy look Dwight gave the camera after he had his 19-minute rendezvous with some little blonde lady that was buttoning up her shirt!!!!), and Michael being mad at Holly...too funny! And of course, Meredith...then that last scene with them eating the steak...ribs...hahaha!!!! So glad Thursday nights are back to being awesome!

Craft Challenge: Take 1

Welcome to my first crafty "challenge" :) This is not really a contest per say (though maybe sometime I'll give out prizes...winkwink), just something to get people crafting, share ideas, and projects.

Challenge 1: Create anything you want using: a pumpkin. This can be anything from carving a basic pumpkin to making pumpkin wall sconces to baking a pumpkin pie.

Deadline: Please post your project on your blog by Thursday, October 23rd (2 weeks, people!). Send me a link to your post and I'll start posting everyone's projects on my blog as they come in. That way, anyone who feels like taking on additional projects before Halloween can steal your idea :) E-mail links to: parodyofanangelx(at)gmail(dot)com

Don't forgot, share our challenge with other bloggers - the more the merrier...and you want to make me happy, right? riiiiight...that's what I thought!

Fall Wreath

Okay okay, I did one too - don't blame me for not knowing about the challenge! Here is my wreath I made last night, I think I spent about15 bucks at Michael's; not too bad (Okay so that doesn't include the pack of glue sticks I had get get).

Excuse my sucky camera :D (And ugly door!)





Even though I burnt my finger on hot glue, I survived this one.

Monday, Monday

Something keeping me happy on a Monday Morning:



Ohhh yeah, bustin' out the Halloween mug - I love holidays!

Kitty Fashion Show

I just received an adorable cat tag that I ordered off etsy from purepanache. Her tags are so cute and she was so nice to work with!!! I highly recommend for anyone looking for a not-so-bland pet tag :) Kitty loves hers:

Craftiness

I was thinking, it would be so fun to have a get-together every couple weeks or so, and have girly craft time! Each time someone different would come up with a different project to do. Problem? Most everyone lives so far away!!!

That makes me sad...maybe that's something you can still do via blogging-I know I've read more than a few crafty challenges people have posted for others to get involved in. It would still be a fun get-together idea though. Le sigh.

Anyone have any projects they are working on or are trying to start? I personally have more than a handful of things I want/need to do (cute Halloween decorations, hello!!!). One thing I am ALMOST done with (started a few weeks ago...) I'll try to post this weekend.

I also will be setting up my craft room this weekend (trying to at least). I did a "craft" search on Flickr...and look at all these craft space ideas!!! Pretty inspiring!

Just...Sad...

I just realized as I was unpacking all our things...that...

OUR BATHROOMS HAVE NO DRAWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

How. Why. Who does that?

I don't know how I am going to get used to this or figure out where to put my stuff. My one suggestion was to get a few baskets to put under my sink. I do not like that idea...that sounds like a lot of clutter and disorganization. Maybe buy something like this cabinet? Though I'd rather have something that didn't take up floor space...le sigh. (Overreaction much? I know..I know...spoiled....)

Decisions, decisions.