Nut Butter

Here's my new obsession. Nut butter. Specifically almond butter. It's delicious. If you haven't yet, you should totally try it. Best of all, it doesn't make my stomach all wonky like peanut butter does! Om nom nom nom!

In other news: I've finally entered the world of Twitter and there's no going back! Follow me @solangesings. Seriously, you won't regret it one bit. And I wouldn't mind the attention.

Now, feast your eyes on this deliciousness. Cranberry muffins!! These are certainly a winner in my book. You want a recipe? Well, here ya go:
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 3/4 cups soft brown sugar
- 9 tbsp butter (melted)
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
- 1 and 1/4 cup CRASINS!!
Instructions

• Preheat oven to 415* F
• Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Stir in sugar and make a well in the center
• Add the combined melted butter, eggs and milk all at once, and fold until just combined. DO NOT OVER MIX. The batter should still be quite lumpy!
• Fold in the CRASINS. Spoon the batter into a well-greased muffin tin (I ended up using the normal sized muffin tin and got about 18 muffins)
• Bake for 20 minutes and then let cool on a wire rack.
• Nom down.

Enjoy the muffins and the nut butter and have a classy evening!

P.S. I start summer school tomorrow. Blech.

Bronze Goddess

Okay, okay! I apologize for not posting the afore mentioned adorable pictures of the BabyBrother. He played the part of "Hansel" in his little class play and had 3 lines!!! (That's pretty big stuff for the class jock!) So, instead of pictures of him in his adorable lederhosen, here are some pictures of the BabyBrother when he was actually a baby and, you know, not ten years old... enjoy :)

Look at da baby, how cute!

He was trying to eat me...

Last one, I promise!!!

Yep. That's the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile. We're officially awesome.

So, in other news, the BabyBrother had a baseball tournament today. Because sitting outside in 107 degrees with full sun is obviously my favorite thing to do (NOT), I told my father that I would be in attendance this weekend to nullify the other baseball parent's suspicions that I do not, in fact, actually exist. College student, for the wiiiiin! Thanks to the full sun and lack of shade supplied by trees or overhangs at the ball park, everyone in my family managed to get sufficiently sunburned, so now we are all miserable, hot, and sore beyond belief. Thank goodness for:

Chandler Farm Body Butter.
This stuff is literally a God-send. The second ingredient is aloe vera, but is has a lovely creamy texture an smells like lavender, so I'm not sticky and stinky with actual aloe vera juices.

Fun Fact:
~For the first time in my life I have managed to get the worst burn out of all the sunburns in my family. My charming madre, however, turned brown. Like, seriously. Brown. She can finally certify her claim to her Mexican heritage!!!*

Mantener elegante, mis amigos!!

 

*my mother is in no way, shape, or form Mexican. It's a joke, and if you don't get it, well too bad for you! Anyway, don't call her Mexican, she'll get offended. That woman is straight up German and prooooud of it!

ACC: pronounced [ak:k]

You'd seriously think I was intentionally avoiding blogging! Lies, I've just been dealing with the wonderful world of community college... Nothing against the institution in itself or the people who work at/attend the small-scale collegiate education centers. I JUST HATE ADMISSIONSSSSSSS.

Rewind: Yesterday I phoned A. Community College to find out what the heck was wrong with my application and to try to register for classes. Over the phone, a huffy lady flatly told me that because I had not provided SAT scores, my admission into the college had been put on hold.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. FREEZE.

Not to brag, but I attend Baylor freakin' University.
Wouldn't it make sense that if I were attending a PRIVATE school of higher education on a loverly academic scholarship, that I would be qualified to attend a small college in HickTown, USA? Apparently not. So, I spent the better part of my morning at the ACC Office of Admissions and Registration arguing with an admissions officer over how legit the SAT scores CollegeBoard had mailed to me 3 years ago are. It's an official letter; I'd say pretty legit. She said not so much...

I return tomorrow for part two of my perilous quest to attend Community College.

On a brighter note, BabyBrother has his school play this afternoon, which the mother and I will attend. If it's super-cute, I might post pictures. Get excited.

Stay classy, my friends.

Illness

Sorry for not posting in so long. Obviously, nothing exciting has been going on in my life of late. For the past two days I've been rather sickie-poo so all I've accomplished in the past 48 hours consists of sitting on the couch and sleeping. Party-party-fun-fun. Not. At. All.

The weather here is FABULOUS, and I wish I felt better so I could go and be active outdoors.

Keep it klassy.

Unpacking

Whew, what a day! I managed to wake up super-duper late this morning (10:00) and therefore had to forgo my morning walk/jog. Sadness. But my day was slightly brightend when I walked to the kitchen and saw these:

A lovely, wonderfully-smelling gift from the boyfrann! Thanks, Dan! Anyway, as much as I would have liked, I did not get to ogle over my beautiful flowers all morning. I mean, my tummy was grumbling, so I had to eat at some point, right? So, for my very late breakfast, I nommed down on some OVER-NIGHT OATS IN A JAR!!! Let the pictures ensue.

Delicious, I know! After my oats began a day of unpacking, pretending to be unpacking, obviously not unpacking, and napping. Pretty un-productive day, as per usual. In the evening my mother forced me to take my youngest brother to baseball practice across town. Blech. So afterwards, I treated myself to one of these bad-boys:

What's in it, you ask? Simple, dear Watson! 1 frozen banana, lots of frozen strawberries, and some almond milk to liquefy it all. Pop it in the food processor and WHA-BAMMM! Instant frozen-fruit-thingy. Smoothie? I guess it's a smoothie.

Do you make your own smoothies? If so, what kind?

Please, kids. Keep it classy.

Summertime

Goodbye freshman year, hello SUMMER!!

In a nutshell: finished my last final on Saturday and drove back to f-wood on Sunday (just in time for mother's day!) accompanied by 472983 lbs. of laundry and an awesome mix CD courtesy of Mr. May, Derek Rogers! This morning I woke up feelin' oh-so-fine and decided to take a nice short walk/jog on the treadmill; I'm still not allowed to do much on concrete on account of my angry meniscus, and I say walk/jog because I only did about a minute of jogging, and 29 minutes of highly inclined, fast-paced walking. But hey, I'm getting somewhere! After that lovely morning workout I quickly showered up and made a delicious breakfast of...

OATS.

And let me tell you, they were delicious! Inspired by FitFoodieFinds, I created my own twist on Lee's Perfect Banana Oats. How did I do it? Here it is:

• BAM! 1 packet of instant oatmeal.
• WHAM! 1/2 cup water.
• FOOM! 1/2 sliced banana
• KA-POW! cinnamon to taste
• PLOP! Nutella. nooooooom
• SHAZAM!! Perfection.

I'll let you check out Lee's blog for more detailed instructions on making this bowl of gloopy awesomeness, but for now, feast your eyes on the greatness that was my breakfast! I plan on eating oats as much as I can over the summer, and hopefully into the school year; they're so fantastic and pretty easy to make. Luckily, I had a slow and relaxing morning so I had the time to test this one out. But, for tomorrow's breakfast... Well, I'll give you a hint...

Let's just say I ran out of Nutella this morning after making my delicious breakfast, and now I am re-using this jar in my second breakfast experiment! Nom nom nom...

Here's what I love about Houston humidity: what it does for my hair! As strange as it sounds, my hair works best either a bone-dry climate, or Houston humidity. It probably also has something to do with the quality of the water her in H-Town, but no matter! My hair looked fabulous today, just the same. Which is a really good thing because I spent the afternoon with the boyfrann, catchin' up and watching Disney's Tangled and such. We had a great time!

Wowzers folks! It's about time for "Dancing With the Stars" to come on!! Tune in tomorrow to hear how my second breakfast concoction went!

Blueberries and Star Fruits

Hello, blog. It's been a while. What with juries right around the corner and a gargantuine Christian Heritage final looming over my noggin, I haven't been paying you much attention, which is rather unfair of me. I admit, I have found other ways of distracting myself from the awesomeness that is the Church from 1545 (Council of Trent) to 1891 (merging of the Particular and General Baptists), but that's no excuse for what I'm about to do. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a life outside of school, and I regret dear blog, to inform the general public (the 7 of you trusty bloggers who are following my hodge-podge musings) of the exciting happenings of my life outside of the practice room while using your domain and web address. So sit back, relax, and GET OVER IT!

Now that that is over with, here's what I actually spent my time doing this weekend:

Thursday was a very, very long day for me as I attended 2 concerts on top of my already full day of classes. As terrible as that sounds, I suffered quietly through 2 hours of fantastic music sung by Baylor's Chamber Singers at 7th and James Baptist Church. You'd have to be an idiot to ask the address of that church. Just sayin'. Then me and "The Group" went to 3 Spoons to celebrate and unwind; but mostly, we went for the yogurt. It's delisssssh.

Friday morning I woke up super-early to watch the Royal Wedding with my lovely future roomie, Miss Rheagan! What a beautiful wedding; I enjoyed every minute of it! And I don't even like weddings all that much! Fun fact: Catherine's dress looked EXACTLY like my mom's wedding dress. Sort of. My mother's dress had lace all the way down the skirt and train, and her bodice didn't dip down to show cleavage... I'm not sure how I felt about that on Kate's dress. Later that night, "The Group" went to this Mediterranean restaurant our music theory teacher suggested to us. It was really sketch but really yummy! Here's photo evidence:

Aren't we so cute?

Anywhooooo... Afterward we made the dangerous trek to none other than... (surprise!) 3 SPOONS!

All that you need to know about the exciting rest of my weekend is that I studied lots and went to 3 Spoons a few more times. I really should be embarrassed about that, but for some reason, I'm really not. It's DELICIOUS!

Now I absolutely have to get back to studying the history of Christianity.

BYE FRANCIS!!!