Hoot of a Good Time

This week started the crazy finals week no one looks forward to. Lucky me, I did not have a final this week; they are all the next week coming up! EEK! But that is okay because I was able to relax a bit and focus on a project I had planned on doing for this week.

One of my friends at my work on campus is obsessed with owls, so when I found this cake tutorial on how to make an owl cake, I immediately saved the magazine and kept reading and rereading how to do it. I read it so much that I realized I had memorized it all when I actually did it this week! I found it in the Martha Stewart living magazine I get (for free, of course), and now I make a point to read all of them I receive now because of this awesome owl tutorial.

Well, first I made the chocolate cake recipe I have had for years. I like to call it my own recipe because it is a combination of recipes I have tried for years and years. I like my cakes a certain way and cannot stand dry cakes at all. Yes, they are harder to work with when they aren't dry, but I am sorry, I worry more about the taste then the look of it.
Then you can print off the owl template from Martha's handy website and cut them all out and place them on the sheet cakes, just like this:

I thought the cutting out part was going to be so difficult and messy, but because I let the cake cool for a couple hours (while I got some homework done), it was much easier. I used a tiny knife too, so I could really cut close. The pieces actually turned out good before I even iced the whole thing. I thought I was going to have to ice over some mistakes! Once I cut everything out, I assembled them together to make sure I had everything I needed before diving into the yellow icing:

I am also very thankful I bought more of my icing ingredients than I needed because I had to actually make four times my normal recipe. The owl needed a lot of it! I feel like it just kept swallowing it! :)

And done! I did not have something to carry him into work that fit his entire body, so I had to makeshift a tray for him out of cardboard and tin foil. The pupils are Hershey Cookies and Cream Drops, and the feet/eye ball are chocolate wafers. I was hoping the grocery store carried chocolate wafers because I had never seen them. But I ended up having to make a batch of homemade chocolate wafers; I even had all the ingredients for it already at home. It was perfect.

I ended up having to cut the eyebrows a little bit because they hung off, which made it look cool, but when you put all that icing on them, they sagged like old ladies! It looked awful, so I snipped them a bit and make him have a unibrow.

And you can't tell, but my man owl has got a belly. A big one! I packed all the leftover scraps on top of his body to give him a nice round belly. I should have taken a side shot. Of course, the end result did not look exactly like Martha's owl, but I was still pretty proud of the little guy. It was a lot of hard work.

When I brought it into work, everyone loved it. Who doesn't love owls? They're adorable! The eyes and feet were gone in a matter of minutes, and the next day only the owls head was left. I am assuming the next time I am schedule to work that there will only be cardboard left, maybe even without the tin foil! Who knows! :)

Summer Monies

After the next two weeks of last days of class and finals, the summer will officially start for this college senior.
Senior? No way. Already? Crazy!

This summer might be the most hectic summer I will ever have. I am going to be working two jobs, one full time and one part time, while also taking one summer class during the second half of summer. I do not necessarily need to take this class, but this particular subject is one of my weaknesses, so I wanted to take it during the summer, so I can solely focus on it and nothing else. We will see what happens because one of my jobs is not very happy about me taking this class because I said a while back that I was not going to take a summer class. They seemed to understand more when I explained my difficulty with it, but these people still do not seem to understand I am still in college. I feel like I have to remind them constantly that I still have homework, tests, quizzes, long nights, study sessions, boring lectures, endless projects, and a constant headache.

Anyway, this post was not meant to gripe about my jobs (that's another post that could be 300 pages long). With the two jobs this summer, I have made a list. I make lists all the time in my notebook I always carry with me. I refer to it as my idea book; I record anything and every thing that pops into my mind throughout the day. You see, I do not have a strong short term memory, especially when it comes to ideas and things I need to do, so this is where I keep myself together. I could make a post every day for a couple years about each list I have made in this notebook. The most exciting part is that I am finally half way through this notebook. It will definitely be sad when I have to leave this one behind for a brand new, fresh one, but I still have a long way to go until that point!

The list I am writing about today is my list for things I would love to save up for, especially with a summer like this one coming up. I want to save, save, save and make my savings account the biggest it's ever been, and trust me, that is not hard to do! I am not going to hit all the things on the list (that would take forever!). I am just gonna hit the main ones!

1. The first on the list is a new bed frame. Oh gosh, I never thought something so silly would be at the top of this list, but I cannot stand my bed right now. I live in an apartment, and my dad did not want me to take my huge bed frame from home to stuff into my tiny apartment, so we just put my mattress on this metal frame. It is not cute at all, and it makes me want to take it down every time I hit the sheets, but I know from experience that my bed is not at all comfortable when it is directly on the ground. The rest of the furniture in my room is white, so I have been looking for a really cheap, but nice white bed frame. The only decent one I have found so far is this one from IKEA, but of course, I have all summer to look.
   
2. The next one on the list is a Bluetooth keyboard case for the iPad. Ricky and I put some savings together last year to buy an iPad. We thought it would be perfect for us to use, especially for our business classes that we take together. We used it a lot at first, but it ended up being not what I wanted to use to take notes. I am not a fan of the keyboard on the iPad. I am a fast typer and try to keep up with the professor when he or she is lecturing, and I was always falling behind on the iPad because I was messing up so much. Last Christmas looking for a gift for my dad, I stumbled upon this case for the iPad that has a keyboard that is connected by Bluetooth to the iPad. I thought it was so convenient! I have seen students bring in their iPad with a keyboard, but they have to haul all those odds and ends throughout the whole day, but this case just folds right up, and I can just slide it right into my huge school bag.
   
   
   
3. I know this one shouldn't be on the list anymore because I recently bought it, but it is still so exciting to me because I never thought I would ever be able to afford this baby. I love seeing a check mark next to this one especially! I finally bought myself an iMac, but of course with some help from my good friend who works at the Apple store. I have a Macbook Pro I got when I graduated high school, but I have always dreamed of owning an iMac. I finally had an apartment I love and a desk that is so beautiful and ready for an iMac. And of course, I am typing all this on it right now. I would show a picture, but I am in the process of organizing and cleaning the office, so maybe later ;)